Press Pass: Certified tweets, a malware white whale and more

Welcome to the latest installment of Press Pass, where CertMag blows through as many industry press releases, blogs, dispatches, messages in a bottle, etc., as we can fit Robes de bal courte in one post. We’ve got the highlights and you can click thru straight to the horse’s mouth for more information.

Get your tweets in a row: Hold on a sec — 000-284 I have to Facebook our fourth-quarter projections. Sound familiar? Given the ubiquitous presence on websites of links to Twitter feeds and Facebook pages, nearly everyone in corporate America is seemingly aware of the need to at least stick a toe in the social media maelstrom. But what does it really take to maximize your company’s digital profile? Now HootSuite, the tech company named for its social media management apparatus, wants to help you hone your social media mastery. HootSuite and Syracuse University have teamed up to offer an Advanced Social Media Strategy (ASMS) cert. It’s $2,200 to enroll, but can you really put a price on the value of mastering your digital domain?

Unhappy Halloween: Is it a last-minute holiday trick? Last week news popped up concerning a possibly mythical malware of white whale-like proportions. A top computer security researcher claims to have discovered a supremely toxic cybersickness that can propogate itself from one machine to the next without even needing a live internet connection (it travels via high-frequency sound signal). Threat researcher Dragos Ruiu is our story’s Captain Ahab — Ruiu says he’s spent 1Z0-517 the last three years attempting to track down the so-called badBIOS malware. The infection strikes the BIOS (Basic Input/Output System), the firmware that fires up your computer during boot-up before handing off normal functions to the operating system.

Ladies welcome: Historically, the crowd around the symbolic water cooler in the IT workforce has probably numbered significantly more men than women. IT security association (ISC)2 says this generalization is Robes de mariée especially true in the cybersecurity end of the IT pool. (ISC)2 is touting the revelations of a new study, which finds that just 11 percent of IT security professionals are women. It’s generally agreed that the industry would benefit from greater diversity. The study also showed that women and men in IT are quite closely aligned, in some respects: Professionals of both genders have been in the field for about 13.5 years, and have comparable higher education backgrounds.

Maximum database: There’s a new kid on the block in the world of database certification. MongoDB Inc. (formerly 10gen) announced last week that it will launch a certification program for MongoDB developers and database administrators on Dec. 3. MongoDB, an open-source data management platform, has grown rapidly since its initial release in 2009. The first level of certification, Associate MongoDB Certified Developer, will launch in December, with professional- and master-level certifications scheduled to follow in 2014.

Got cybersecurity skills?: Everyone wants to stay one step ahead of the (apparently) legions of hackers who are knocking on your ethernet connection. There’s a persistent and increasingly voluble drumbeat that the IT workforce needs more highly-trained security professionals. How highly-trained, and by whom, are emerging questions. An article at FCW.com concedes that certification is the standard for now, but questions whether cybersecurity credentials are adequately preparing the badly needed army of digital guardians protecting against cybersearch-and-destroy specialists.

TESTING, TESTING — Exam opportunities

EMC2 will update its E20-517 Symmetrix Solutions Specialist exam as of Dec. 6 MORE DETAILS